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Diabetes can affect your eye health — in fact, it's a leading cause of blindness. Fortunately, most eye health issues can be prevented or controlled with treatment.

Diabetes: Common Eye Complications

People with diabetes are at greater risk of certain eye diseases. These include:

Glaucoma: a buildup of pressure in the eye that can eventually lead to blindness. The pressure squeezes the blood vessels that carry blood to your optic nerve and retina. With glaucoma, vision is lost gradually as important parts of the eye called the optic nerve and retina are damaged. Drugs or surgery are available to treat this eye health problem. If you have diabetes, you are 40 percent more likely to develop glaucoma than people who don't have diabetes.

Cataract: a cloudiness in the eye lens that prevents light from reaching the retina, which is essential for you to see normally. People with diabetes are 60 percent more likely to develop cataracts. They also tend to develop cataracts at a younger age than other people. When vision becomes too obscured, surgery can be performed to remove the clouded lens.

Diabetic retinopathy: a disorder of the retina specifically caused by diabetes. There are two forms of diabetic retinopathy:

Non-proliferative retinopathy. This is the most common type of retinopathy. If you have this disorder, the capillaries (tiny blood vessels) at the back of your eye start to expand, forming pouches. The condition starts out being mild, but can progress to moderate or severe forms as more vessels get blocked. Blindness usually doesn't happen with this type of retinopathy, but fluid can leak into the macula, which is the part of the eye that helps you focus. If this occurs, it's called macular edema; your vision will become blurry or you can go blind. There is no typical treatment for non-proliferative retinopathy, but macular edema can be treated to prevent further vision loss.

Proliferative retinopathy. This form of the condition develops in some people when non-proliferative retinopathy progresses to a more severe state. Blood vessels become damaged enough to start closing. Your body responds by growing new vessels, but they tend to be weak and leaky. The blood that they leak can block your vision in a condition known as vitreous hemorrhage. Those new vessels can also prompt the growth of scar tissue, which eventually shrinks, pulling the retina out of position, and resulting in a condition called retinal detachment. All of this can happen before you even notice a problem with your sight.

Diabetes: Maintaining Good Eye Health

Several factors go into your risk of developing eye disease when you have diabetes. Blood glucose control, blood pressure control, your genetic makeup, and the length of time you've had diabetes all play a role. Although you can’t control all of these factors, one thing you can do is get regular eye exams and maintain good eye health.

Here are steps to help prevent eye health problems related to diabetes:

Do not smoke.

Have an eye exam every year, including pupil dilation so that your eye health professional can see the back of your eye.

If you plan to become pregnant, ask if you should have an eye exam. If you are already pregnant and have diabetes, be sure to make an appointment for an eye check-up during the first trimester.

Tell your eye care professional that you have diabetes and ask to be checked for signs of glaucoma and cataracts.

Diabetes: Eye Health Treatment Options to Consider

Glaucoma and cataracts can both be treated with surgery. If you develop macular edema as part of non-proliferative retinopathy, your doctor may recommend laser therapy. In this procedure, the beam from a laser is pointed at your retina and seals off leaky blood vessels. This can help to slow your loss of sight.

If blood has already filled your vitreous, you might need a type of surgery called a vitrectomy. In this procedure, the bloody fluid is removed and replaced with clean fluid to improve your vision.

Unfortunately, there are no medications that can stop diabetic retinopathy. If you have pre-proliferative or proliferative diabetic retinopathy, your doctor may recommend laser therapy called pan-retinal photocoagulation, which is similar to macular edema laser therapy and works to seal leaking blood vessels. Although it can prevent more vision loss, it can't undo the damage that's already been done to your vision.

Your best defense against these eye health problems is to keep your diabetes under control with a good management plan that includes regular eye exams.

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